Jupiter and Saturn will align in December to create a seemingly "double planet" in the night sky — and it's going to happen just before Christmas.
Popular Mechanics reports that Jupiter and Saturn will align for the first time in centuries. In fact, the two planets haven't been this close since the Middle Ages.
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The two planets will align after sunset in the Northern Hemisphere. Saturn and Jupiter will appear together in the southwestern part of the sky, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Faint 'super-planet' discovered by radio telescope for the 1st time | Space
Scientists have discovered a cold, faint "super-planet" that has remained elusive to traditional infrared survey methods.
Observations from the Low-Frequency Array, or LOFAR radio telescope, revealed a brown dwarf, which researchers have designated BDR J1750+3809 and nicknamed Elegast. Brown dwarfs are sometimes referred to as failed stars or super-planets because they are too small to be considered stars, yet too big to be considered planets.
Solar Winds and the Planets
The mass in the solar winds is made of plasma, the fourth state of matter. Plasma occurs when atoms have so much energy they separate into protons, electrons, and helium nuclei. This plasma originates in the Sun's atmosphere.
The Sun's atmosphere is divided into two layers: chromosphere and corona. Above the opaque photosphere or the surface of the sun is the chromosphere layer, which is a few thousand kilometers thick. The temperature increases with height here reaching about 10,000° at the top of the chromosphere. Fibrous jets known as spicules appear and travel through the photosphere in about 10 minutes, carrying plasma to higher altitudes.
We're About to Witness a Super-Rare Planetary Alignment Not Seen in 800 Years
Star-gazers are in for a treat over Christmas, as Jupiter and Saturn will get closer to each other in Earth's night sky than they have been for nearly 800 years. Set up your telescope, hope for a clear night, and get ready.
The celestial synchronisation has been in the works since summer as Jupiter and Saturn have been moving closer together in the night sky, and between 16-25 December they'll be separated by only 1/5th the diameter of a full moon.
Check out this next:
Astronomers See a Newly Forming Planetary Disk That's Continuing to Feed On Material from
Over the last few years, astronomers have observed distant solar systems in their early stages of growth. ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) has captured images of young stars and their disks of material. And in those disks, they’ve spotted the tell-tale gaps that signal the presence of growing young planets.
As they ramped up their efforts, astronomers were eventually able to spot the young planets themselves. All those observations helped confirm our understanding of how young solar systems form.
About Half of Sun-Like Stars Could Host Rocky, Habitable-Zone Planets | NASA
Planetary Scientists Say It's Time To Explore Venus : NPR
Three missions from Earth are currently headed to Mars. But some scientists are saying it's time to go to Venus, despite all the challenges in heading to Earth's toxic, volcanic planetary neighbor.
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Right now, three missions from Earth are headed to the planet Mars. But some planetary scientists say the time has come to look at another of Earth's neighbors - Venus. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has more on why Venus is getting attention.
MARTHA GILMORE: The Venus atmosphere is so thick, it's almost like you can float down. It's thick enough that you can just sort of gently land on the surface.
Bizarre molten planet discovered with lava ocean, supersonic winds
Scientists say they have possibly identified a lava world so dramatic that it might boast a thin regional atmosphere of vaporized rock where it is closest to its star.
That exoplanet is called K2-141b and was originally discovered in 2017. The world is about half again as big as Earth but orbits so close to its star, which is one class smaller than our own, that it completes several loops each Earth-day with the same surface permanently facing the star.
"All rocky planets, including Earth, started off as molten worlds but then rapidly cooled and solidified," Nicolas Cowan, a planetary scientist at McGill University in Canada and a coauthor on the new paper, said in a statement . "Lava planets give us a rare glimpse at this stage of planetary evolution."
Happening on Twitter
PASS IT ON: Planets Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon will appear in the southeast sky tonight an hour after suns… https://t.co/DxVybBRNRI mark_tarello (from Mankato, Minnesota.) Sat Nov 28 18:39:37 +0000 2020
PASS IT ON: Planets Saturn and Jupiter will appear close to each other in the southwest sky tonight an hour after s… https://t.co/f8NQmpDMPB mark_tarello (from Mankato, Minnesota.) Fri Nov 27 15:59:44 +0000 2020
On Dec. 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear aligned like a bright double planet. They haven't appeared to be this… https://t.co/zIlmhXmACp USATODAY (from USA TODAY HQ, McLean, Va.) Sat Nov 28 17:02:00 +0000 2020
Just after sunset on the evening of Dec. 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth's night sky th… https://t.co/XgTAExG7XP DavidBrin (from San Diego) Sat Nov 28 04:43:42 +0000 2020
